"Faster" - The song and how it came about

Most of the time, writing songs for me is just picking up a guitar and waiting for something to come out of the soundhole. However, sometimes songs come out of a desire to write a very specific kind of tune, or a song in a certain chosen genre. The push may come from instrumentation, rhythm, or just from the basic inspiration to melt faces live.


Even from this wider perspective, "Faster" was a freak of a song to write. It came about from a surprisingly persistent desire to convey a very specific mood through music; the feverish feel of driving in a car at high speeds on empty roads at night. Don't ask me why, this probably comes from my lifelong fascination with a bevy of 80's soft rock bands and early MTV music videos.

* * *

If this gets Chris Rea going, it's good enough for me too.

Anyway, at first I didn't have anything but this basic feel I was going for - no melodies, no rhythms, no nothing. Then came the basic bass pattern, quickly followed by a very Billy Idolish guitar bridge chorus. Like is typical for me with these kinds of things, the first reaction was laughter, next came embarrassment, and then the quiet resignation that this silly little riff was actually quite necessary. And awesome in its own way.


With these couple of parts floating about, I let the song brew in its own juices for a very long time. It was maybe five years altogether in the making, making "Faster" probably our second oldest new song after "Devil May Care". I was in no hurry to get it done; actually, I went back and forth with regarding the basic ideas and melodies ridiculous or worthwhile.

* * *

Fittingly, the chorus vocal melody came to me when I was driving, although admittedly during the daytime and at conservative speeds. I was coming back from visiting my grandmother at a hospital, which was the last time I ever saw her. The chorus chords, that had recently been going through various transformations in my head, took their final shape as I sat down in the car and came up with a bit of an unusual staccato vocal line. (Which later on would prove to be a bitch to write words to).


Again, much to the confusion of my beloved bandmates, the song was far from finished when I brought it to rehearsals. It had maybe two guitar parts, and the rest was just humming, rhythms and making a lot of unsettling gestures to try to let everyone know what I had in mind. Fortunately, they grasped the tune pretty fast and turned into something much better. Instead of keeping the pulse throughout the chorus, they made it driving and heavy at the same time, which suited the vocals perfectly.

* * *

In the end, I'm happy to say the song ended up being very close to the mood and feel I initially was going for, even though the incubation period laster forever. 


Never resist ideas, my friends. Especially the persistent ones.


~Markus


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Token background music. Yet again:

Radiohead - King of Limbs

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Waste No Words - The Words

Most Sestina songs are love stories. Now why do I feel slightly ashamed to admit that?


Let's face it, choosing to write a love song is not exaclty the most original route to take. You can write about just about anything else and feel more pioneering about it.


On the other hand, no two love stories are the same, so writing about them never really gets old. Just ask Paul McCartney.

* * *

The lyrics in Waste No Words came out of a working title and a simple idea for a  story I had. The two had no real common thematic ground to begin with, but I decided to put them together anyway. Quite like in a good, old-fashioned marriage arrangement. Sometimes it's refreshing to just toy around with ideas and see what comes out.


Not the easiest write, though. This was one of my earlier "new" Sestina lyrics, and at this point I was still trying to figure out how to convey a story in the little space of a song. Come to think of it, I still am.


Anyway, telling a love story is an especially tricky thing to pull off with a handful of lines. There has to be some point of focus, or you'll probably find yourself grasping at straws trying to cram it all in there. Sounds reasonable, right?


So in the spirit of disregarding my own rules (I've been doing a lot of that lately) I ended up trying to cover the whole thing anyway; or, at least, the space of one year. I didn't start out that way, but a lot of things kept changing while going through many drafts - the ages of the characters, the story arc etc. - so eventually I just let the story freely go where it wanted.


I think it turned out pretty good in the end.

* * *

The last lines I wrote were the last lines of the song. That was actually the moment I really understood the story I was telling. When I began rehearsing the song by myself, it was only after a few days I could finish that part without choking up.


Hopeless love stories from a hopeless sap to hopeless romantics...


~Markus


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Waste No words

turning around
spots him in a crowd

a face so young bears no lines at all

hers a roadmap of the lost and the alone

such a pretty thing

he takes her by the hand

like a lover like a son

she breathes him in
and he breathes her out

one more sigh
then he helps her down

still holds on
she stays wrapped around

for the longest time
she fears

she's falling hard

saying

"waste no words

you're all alone

save the truth

for somebody who wouldn't know"

she fills her heart

asleep in his arms

and dreams about the final train out of this town

spring moves on
this has got to stop

tells herself that one month is enough

takes one year before deciding that she's done

they say love is never found in cheap motels

but the boy is waiting
and she says

"waste no words

he's all alone

save the truth

for somebody who wouldn't know"

she fills her heart

asleep in his arms

and dreams about the final train out of this town

she knows herself

knows what time can do

still tells him

"this I swear is true"

"I might be old
I might be a fool

but I'll stay here

and I belong to you"

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Chosen films for a counter-intuitive writing environment:

Mario van Peebles - Baadasssss!

Christopher Smith - Severance

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Faster = Later

The irony...oh, the unbearable irony...


Seems that our next song, the appropriately titled "Faster", is still some time away from reaching your ears, our dear listeners.


The reason for the holdup is simple: Much of what we recorded live is rubbish. Out of tune, out of beat, sounds bad, feels worse. Just plain crap.


The song is amazing, though.




Thankfully, Pekka did best of us three slobs, so we're keeping his pretty excellent drum tracks and building the song from there, top to bottom all over again. It's going to take a couple of weeks before we're there, though.


Since my recent rant extolling the virtues of live recording, I should probably be movie-quoting Jack Nicholson: "Well, don't I feel like the f*****g a*****e".




Bear with us, dear friends. We promise to make it worth your wait.


~Markus

Music to lessen/increase the guilt:

Jesu (pretty much anything they've ever recorded)

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Waste No Words - The song and how it came about

Writing music is fun? It's a total pain in the ass. Excruciating, continuous, torturous toil of putting in sweat, blood and tears for something that gives little or no rewards, until you just wish you were collecting stamps instead.

Ok, kidding. But no matter how many songs or riffs or ideas you come up with, every once in awhile you feel completely dried out. Run out of ideas. Like you're never going to write a decent song again.

It's actually quite amusing how easy it is to believe each time this happens, even though the ideas always eventually come.

* * *

After one of these long, dry spells, Waste No Words was a proverbial cork off the floodgate. I had a daily date with my guitar for weeks on end, but nothing seemed to come out of it; I discarded bad ideas as fast as I was coming up with them.

Then, one afternoon, the chorus riff just came out by itself, and I wrote the verse right after it. In less than an hour, I had the basic song structure down along with the vocal melodies. I liked it, so I brought it to the band right away.

At this point, we'd wrtitten enough together as a band to get to the meat of the song right away. It was one of our the fastest writes yet - practically all the first-time arrangements stuck.

* * *

This needs to be in color.
The awesomeness of Bolton cannot be contained in BW

One thing I really wanted to avoid was making this song into a Def Leppard ballad. The verse vocal lines are sappy enough to pour some serious sugar on an unsuspecting listener, and on top of that, I always saw this as a love song. Waste No Words had all the makings of a '80's hair band disaster.

Fortunately, one thing that always comes to rescue at times like these is our tuning policy - once the chorus kicks in, along with Jaakko's bass sounding like the Goat of Mendes farting blood on a bible camp, any traces of sap are effectively removed.

Maybe in the future, we should embrace this effeminate side of ours. Go full ballad. Become the Michael Boltons of shoegazing metal. "Can I Touch You There"?

Why the hell not, Michael. Grope away.

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Music for the unsuspecting masses:

PJ  Harvey - Let England Shake

Devin Townsend . Deadhead, Addicted (LP)

Michael Bolton - Can I Touch You There

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Ocean Sky - The words

Writing words for Sestina is all about stories.

Somewhere along the way, I got tired of writing the garden-variety semi- or fully autobiographical confessionals for song lyrics. That seems to be what everyone is expecting from singers: Singing is such a personal, naked act that people tend to automatically assume that you're singing about yourself and your own real-life experiences. I think most singer-songwriters more or less have to deal with peoples expectations of them being the protagonist in their songs, and for many, this is a comfortable, natural route to take in writing.

* * *

The ghost of crooners past 

Ocean Sky was one of the first songs where I made the conscious choice of just writing a story about something other than myself, just anything that suited the music best. This was a liberating experience - for the first time, I didn't have to exaggerate the modest dramas of my own, rather placid life, but I had the freedom to create a story I felt strongly about, one that I really wanted to tell.

My initial concern was that I wouldn't be able to react emotionally as strongly to this new "fiction" as when singing about personal matters. Interestingly, it proved to be the opposite; I was quite surprised how hard the song hit me when I finished the words. It's a very simple story, but there's something going on beneath the surface that, in some ways, is just as much a piece of myself as a memory or an experience.

* * *

The lyrics for Ocean Sky were written piece by piece. The story is based on a short poem I wrote years ago on a Summer day while sitting in a train, waiting for departure. A long time afterwards, when the music for the song was completed, I happened to be going through my sketchbook and rediscovered the poem. It felt right for what we were working on, so I took the title and a few lines, and it ballooned into a story.

So nowadays, practically all the words for Sestina songs are stories. I'm having a lot of fun painting with these new colors, letting the song reveal what it wants to tell. Kind of like having beats and notes giving birth to places and dreams.

As far as past-times go, I think I'm pretty happy with this one.

.

Ocean Sky

under the ocean sky

you drown in sighs

you remember

sometimes

under the ocean sky

steps that cross the shoreline

are taken by the tide

and by dawn

you'll be gone

and close the door

head on out

and sink the oars

drift on with the flow

with the autumn tide

you leave your home

come morning light

you leave the shore

follow until you're lost

under the ocean sky

you miss but can't recall

her eyes and how she smiled

when she thought that no-one saw

and how she used to lay

awake before the dawn

in a bedroom full of flowers

with a window out to sea

you gave out for the waves

that dress she never wore

quit hoping many times

until one day you saw

with shards of wood and quills

it washed back on the shore

white as it ever was

her hair caught in its straps

take me down

take me below

show me where

the rivers are born

take me down

take me below

show me where

the buried go

* * *

Music to trigger inferiority complexes to:

Radiohead - The King of Limbs

* * *

"Ocean Sky" - The song and how it came about

©Joel Antunes

"Ocean Sky" is one of the oldest "new" Sestina songs we've had lying around. The intro riff came to me a little before our first band practice with the current line-up, just out of genuine excitement of getting to play with the band again, and we just built the first verse and chorus then and there from a few different available ideas.


However, like with almost all of our tunes, after writing as far as the first chorus, we hit the wall:

"Ok, what part comes next?"

"Umm…I don't know. Definitely not the first verse again."

"Say what?"

(...deafening silence...)

Of course the song got finished eventually, but it took many different versions. Maybe ten or so rehearsal demos of trying on different parts and progressions before we got it to where it is now. And the same goes for the vocals; for quite some time it felt I was coming up with less stuff than I was throwing out, but once I started bringing in words for unfinished melodies things evolved quite naturally.

* * *

So as you can see, our writing is not exactly streamlined. I think one of the reasons why a lot of our stuff seems to have the attention span of a TV-addicted three-year old is probably our pig-headedness in trying to do everything the unconventional way. Often once we get to the phase in writing a song where we could just repeat the first verse and chorus before finishing up - like it's normally done - we just kind of shift gears and forget the first half of the song entirely.


Also, "Ocean Sky" is one of those jerky bastards of ours without a chorus. That's right, no repeated sing-alongs on this one. Actually, there are no repeated parts anywhere in the song - there's just melodies, chord changes and rhythms that are shuffled in the mix and get spat out as different versions during the course of the song.


In classical music, this kind of writing is the norm. In rock music, people tend to shake their heads at us a lot.

* * *

Actually, I have absolutely no idea whether or not this kind of writing makes any sense to you, the listener. This is something I've been struggling to come to grips with for some time now: The song makes complete sense to us, but does it make any sense to you? I can definitely say I've had more than my share of breaking down in tears when listening to this particular tune come together (that's right, I'm a complete sissy), so you could say I'm feeling what we're doing. But does any of this register emotionally to you?




Perhaps you could answer that for us. After all, music is basically about communication, and I'd rather not speak double Dutch.




~ Markus

A film blaring in the background while I was writing this:

Quentin Tarantino - Reservoir Dogs

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Ocean Sky

Well well well, our new song "Ocean Sky" is finally here! It took us the 10 extra days to really hammer this one home - there was quite a bit of stuff in this particular tune to juggle (such as live strings courtesy of our friend Tuukka Helminen from AVA and Nuria). Jaakko really pulled his weight mixing this sucker.

Right now, the song can be found in the following locations:

Our website

Our Myspace profile

...and Reverbnation et al to follow soon. Hope you like it!

~ Markus

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Old Shit / New Shit

So it's February 2nd!! How do you like our new track, Ocean Sky? 


Oh yes, I'm sorry - we haven't finished it yet.


Since that track is pretty complicated with a lot of vocals, synths and live strings, we decided to take another week to make it as good as we possibly can. So early next week, it'll be up for download. Promise.

* * *

In the meantime, here's a blast from the past: We've put the entire Unborn-EP, recorded back in the day when Sestina got started, as a free download on our site.


The music is pretty straightforward and, well, normal compared to our more recent tracks. However, there are a couple of songs on it I still like a lot, and you can hear some of the ideas in raw form we've developed a lot further since these humble beginnings. Who knows, one or two of these old tunes might end up as revised versions on our live set!




It's seven songs altogether, and you can download it as a .zip -file including both mp3 and m4a formats. Or just listen to it here.


Hope you like it!




~ Markus

Music that kept me amused through writing this:

- Eels - Old Shit / New Shit

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"Don't Look" - The Recordings

On our last two demoed songs (Devil May Care + Rose in Dreams), we recorded everything the conventional way - setting up a click track, recording drums with demo guitar, then bass and guitars, and finally adding vocals and synths.


Now this is the easy way of doing things - you can polish up everything separately, and it's simple to add and take away things before and during the final mix. There's a lot of room for experimentation, and the engineer is always happy to have a clean and tidy project to work on. You can also easily fix up mistakes afterwards.

* * *

However, this is not without its drawbacks. For one, the entire beat of the song is anchored to the click track, and I've really come to hate the hell out of how that sounds. It literally sucks the life out of any band. How the band plays together becomes a minor consideration; if the band is shitty, using a click track can make it mediocre. If the band is amazing, they are brought down fair to middling. Many of the Pro Tools crimes rampant nowadays are because of this click track dumbassery.

(Admittedly some genres like electronic music may require a click track - in my opinion, rock'n'roll definitely does not)

Furthermore, recording bits and pieces separately takes the band out of the performance. When playing with a band, at the best of times you can get these wonderful moments where players communicate and react together, creating something from the moment that changes and elevates the song. No room for that in piecemeal recording.


Also, some songs simply do not work on a steady beat. Sometimes a song requires for the tempo to breathe along, speeding up and slowing down when needed. Don't Look is definitely one of these songs: We knew from the get-go that it would have to start quite slow, and then gradually speed up for the last chorus. So early on, click track was out the window.

Pekka, really exploring the studio space (sans cowbell)

Consequently we tried to look for a place that would accommodate live playing for this five song session. Fortunately Jaakko, as a student of recording engineering, happened to have an excellent location for us at his school in Orimattila, about an hour drive from Helsinki.


A big, pro-quality recording studio. We booked it for a weekend, and proceeded to set it up for live recording - bass, guitar and drums together in one room, no click tracks.

* * *

And what a room it was; I think I've never recorded in such a large space. Sounded great, though. We worked to isolate the amplifiers reasonably well to still get reasonably clean drum recordings, but of course there's always some spillover. No matter, the main thing was to get us all in the same space, playing off from each other.


It took us the first half of the first day to set things up, and then started feeling out playing and recording together. There was some slight nervousness at first, because we knew that if any one of us was having a bad day, it would affect everyone's playing. Also, we'd never played live in front of an audience with this line-up, only at rehearsals. After a few tries we started to find a footing. Withing an hour, we were recording for keeps.

Jaakko, chained to the mixing console.
The hard price of DIY - there's a lot of DIY to be done.

For myself and Pekka, this was probably the most enjoyable recording session so far, ever. I knew that nothing would sound as polished this time around as when recording separately, but everything felt immediate and fresh. Playing together was fun, and even though every song has their fair share of missed notes and mistakes, this sounded like a band rather than a computer.


Poor Jaakko, though - he had to pull double duty as a bassist and an engineer. On the next session, we have to get him in on the fun and have someone else to worry about the mics and cables.

* * *

In the end (and despite all my recording rants) a lot "Don't Look" was still recorded afterwards. I'm just not good enough of a musician to play and sing at the same time sufficiently well, so we booked later times for committing vocals. We got the verses of the song in with a couple of takes, but the chorus was a bitch to sing - I had to take time to look for the right approach in the confines of my vocal dungeon (bedroom), until I finally got it sorted out.


The last additions were brought to the song on Christmas Day, when I added some synths, and especially the piano melody that became a crucial part of the song. This was done in between excessive Christmas eating binges, wearing a wifebeater and my trusty long johns, sweating on a couch and doodling on my laptop. How's that for rock glamour?




All in all, there were only probably a few hours spent recording the song. I think we can do it better and faster in the future, especially once we get a better hang of playing live in a studio.




Personally, I'm not looking back. The click track is dead to me now :)




~ Markus

Listened and enjoyed:

- U2 - discography on shuffle

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"Don't Look" - The words

These days I try my best of being intentionally specific with song lyrics - not just blurt out phrases for the hell of it, but to actually focus on what I'm trying to get across. Most would probably think it's a given that anyone writing words for songs automatically has this quality, but I'm afraid I acquired it rather late. For the longest time, much of my words were just there - no specific idea or purpose, but because the melodies needed some lyrics on the side. Not very subtle or artistic, but it did teach me to understand the tonality of different syllables, and how the emotion of music changed with the words you sang and how you sang them. I sort of learned the ropes by just playing with the building blocks.

* * *

In some ways, "Don't Look" is a throwback to this old way of mine of doing things. The name of the song was a working title I cooked up for what I felt fit the chorus melody, and it just stuck. Then I proceeded to write words that suited it and the song, waiting anxiously for them to reveal what on earth I was writing about. Notes upon notes. Eventually this did happen, and when I was nearing completion I (fortunately) had a very clear idea of what I wanted to say.

However, one thing the song's not is specific; I wanted to leave a lot of room for interpetation. Some people do an excellent job in putting many layers of meaning into a few song lines while at the same time keeping a narrative going. I really admire this ability, but what I personally sometimes love to go for is to have a thematic thread, but to keep the song indefinite enough for people to project their own stories on it. I think this fit "Don't Look" quite well.

* * *

In the end, the only thing I think counts is whether or not the lyrics can be felt. Getting there is always a bit tricky - not all themes resonate with all people, and some of what this particular song uses may be a bit too unwieldy for their own good. I think "Don't Look" is definitely not the best lyrics I've written - it's technically not very polished and perhaps somewhat simplistic - but by now they're tied to this song to the extent that it's unlikely for me to go back to revise them. Flaws and all, to me they're complete.

Furthermore, I really feel them when I sing them, and that's all I personally need.

~ Markus

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Don't Look

son

you're old enought to know

there's more to fear

than what is shown

I've seen

a world outside these walls

it will lift you high

and let you fall

when the dark is creeping up

I hope you'll turn and run right back

and the sins you carry in your blood

I'll share and cradle in my arms

don't look

your hand is in the shadow

one step

and you are sure to follow

your heart

would lie

would weigh you down

take mine

'cause you can't make it without

I taught you kindness

taught you doubt

and still you wanted to find out

I nursed you close

kept you in shelter

yet you went looking for another

but when your pulse begins to race

remember that this is your place

and those you've met

the things you've seen

don't matter here

alone with me

don't look

you're standing in the shadow

one step

and I can't surely follow

your heart

would lie

would weigh you down

take mine

'cause I can do without

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